A while ago I was roaming Pinterest (as one does when they need to be taken down a peg or two about everything involving eating, drinking, clothing, shelter, and parenting) and something caught my eye.

It was so simple, yet seemed so Pinterest-y – a toddler activity that involved basically no mess, no skill, and was very easy to set up. “YES,” I thought to myself, “something that I can do that is enriching for my child and I can actually say out loud that I did something I pinned.” One of those total win-win scenarios. Yee-haw!

As you may know, I’ve been daily vlogging to keep my mind busy and to preserve precious memories. Memories such as these. Who would want to forget that when I don’t have a lot of time to choose my words I refer to a measurement as “a fart’s worth?”

“But Carrie,” you may say, “a fart isn’t a measurable entity.”

And I would say, “Yes it is, what you mean to say is that it cannot be a set amount, as every fart is different, like a snowflake.”

And you’d be like, “Right, that’s what I meant – you can measure a fart by volume of sound or a subjective scale like smell, but ultimately, if you were to tell me ‘a fart’s worth,’ it may mean something different to me than to you.”

And I’d say, “Yes. I agree, and I have to say, thank you for being so polite in our discourse and not immediately yelling at me about the immeasurability of farts. This is why we are friends.”

And you’d make a joke about how our friendship means several fart’s worths to you and we’d both laugh.

Then, after the back patting and laugh-winding-down-sighing, you’d ask how the activity went and I’d tell you that it completely and utterly failed.

I must say that in the 20-45 seconds total Lydia spent poking at these bags of finger paint, I could have taken a picture and said that she loved it, slapped it on Pinterest, and basically created an urban legend.

My daughter had a book she got for Christmas from a relative. This book is called “Songs to Go.” It is a book that is nothing but random pictures and the lyrics to the songs that are included on a portable music player. Here are some terrible pictures to help demonstrate what I mean:

She loves this thing. Both the book and the music player. I keep saying I will never buy her Kidz Bop (which I until now had been calling “Kid Bops”), but here she is listening to the same lady sing the same twenty 30 second songs over and over and over again, like a reverse siren.

One of these songs is The More We Get Together:

This is nothing but extrovert propaganda. Horrible.

Your friends are my friends and vice versa? And they’re all in the same room? And I have to get to know them all at once? No.

I’ve written some shy introvert versions of this song in case you’re in need of one like me:

The more we have our own time
our own time our own time
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be
and I’ll have my own space
and you’ll have your own space
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be

or

I’ll see you all on Facebook
on Facebook on Facebook
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts
Then you can like my posts and
say “aw” to my photos
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts

or

I’m better one on o-one
on o-one on o-one
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too
then an talkative buffer
can help conversation
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too

There’s a place in Pigeon Forge,TN (where we are this week), a magical place, where once, a long time ago, someone said, “We have a bunch goats, maybe people will come look at them.”

Then, someone else said, “But how do you make money off of that? Nobody is going to pay to just come pet some goats.”

“No, they don’t get to pet them.”

“Ok. Are they mean or diseased goats? Are people paying to not have to touch them?”

“No, we’re going to put them on the roof of a building and then inside that building we will sell stuff. And, if people want, they can buy food for the goats, perform manual labor in the blazing sun, and send the food up to the goats. We’ll also build a roller coaster thing and people can pay for buckets of sand with rocks in them, we’ll call it ‘gem mining.'”

“Sure, why not.”

And thus, Goats on the Roof was born.

The goats can have all the goat food and ice cream cones (without ice cream, that’s what they put the goat food in to send it up) they want, but there is one rule:

Bummer.

Personally, I would have underlined the word “not,” but I’m not an Expert, so what do I know. I took it to mean only the Skittles and sent five bucks worth of gum up to them.

Before you get your hopes up, the video below is not of me sending a bunch of gum up to the goats. It’s basically showing you slides from my vacation but there’s thousands of them and audio.

A few months ago I ran across some daily vlogs while trying to get a visual fix for my Disney World obsession. After a while I found watching peoples’ daily lives fascinating after first thinking, “what a weird thing to like to do.”

I started to think about how nice it must be to have all of those memories and outings and conversations in nice little edited bite sized nuggets, and how I had thousands of photos and videos I hadn’t done anything with. Then I thought about how we need new porch furniture cushions and and wondered if we were running low on cheese. That reminded me that my attention span is woefully non-existent these days which isn’t helping the writer’s block issues.

And after that and a lot of tortilla chips, I began to wonder, if I started a vlog on YouTube, would that be enough of an “outside” influence for me to stay on top of videos and creating things the kids may like to see when they’re older instead of the total lack of “inside” motivation I have to do it without anyone else seeing it.

Idunno.

But I’ve done the first few days. I see this also as a challenge to myself. I don’t like the sound of my voice and I get down on myself about a lot of things. I care too much what other people think and I don’t take risks because I can be shy and scared. I see this as throwing myself into the deep end but still within the pool of what I would consider my comfort zone. That was a terrible sentence.

Anyway, below are my first four daily vlogs. If you’re a YouTube person, you can subscribe and comment at the actual video. You can go here to my channel to subscribe (I think the button is to the right below the picture of Jenkins). If not, I’ll probably collect some and put them in a post every once in a while.

It’s been a very good thing to keep my brain busy and the gears in there moving, but not so daunting that I just shut down and don’t do anything (like writing these days). And I’ve thought of a couple of things I could write here now that those gears are creakily turning and churning.

P.S. I can’t for the life of me come up with a name for the channel. I don’t want to use Cannibalistic Nerd because it doesn’t really reflect the content so far. Kremlock is complete gibberish so I’m not sure that works, either. It’s a placeholder, but for what? FOR WHAT?

This post was hastily written during a race against time while Lydia napped. All typos and terrible turns of phrase must be submitted for fear of waking baby.